Marie Ginzova and her children Chava and Petr

This picture was taken in Prague in 1930 the year I was born. There is my mother Marie Ginzova, me in a pram and my brother Petr. We are walking on the Vltava river bank. My mother was named Marie Dolanska and was born in Cibuz, near Hradec Kralove, in 1898. My mother grew up in the country and then in Hradec Kralove, where she went to a commerce-oriented high school and then worked as a secretary at an insurance company. She also took German and French at school. At home they spoke Czech. Our mother was much more open and approachable than our father. My mother had many interests, all sorts of intellectual ones, but she also used to go to gymnastics. My brother was named Petr Ginz and was born in 1928 in Prague. Our childhood was more or less the same. Petr was two years older and I loved him very much. He had his bar mitzvah in the Maisel Synagogue in Prague, I remember that afterwards there was a small celebration at home with relatives, and a chocolate cake. Petr was a talented boy, and when Jews were no longer being accepted at high school, my parents put him in a school named the Experimental School, in Nusle. It was a special school for talented children where they were attempting to teach with not completely conventional methods. Our parents thought that here his talent would take root and develop. But soon after they threw Petr out of this school as well, because of his Jewish origin. I was born in Prague in the year 1930. Since then not much has changed in Prague, that is, modern technology has of course changed things a lot, there are many more cars driving around and the metro. But as far as streets and buildings go, they're the same streets, the same buildings, the same Vltava River, that I knew as a child.